Working conditions were horrendous on farms in Southern California, to say the least. Wages were 60% of what they were under the Bracero Program,ranging from 70 to 90 cents, and work was backbreaking . The average life expectancy of the farmers was 49 years, 21 years younger than the national average due to the abundance of carcinogenic pesticides. The annual salary of approximately $1,800 for entire families couldn't support anything for these workers, and even housing with basic sanitation was not available.
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Dugenheimer, Robert. “An Image of Mexicans Working in the Fields.” Kicking out Immigrants Doesn’t Raise Wages At Least, It Didn’t When America Tried in the 1960s, 4 Feb. 2017, www.economist.com/united-states/2017/02/04/kicking-out-immigrants-doesnt-raise-wages.
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Gordon, Scott. “A home for Mexican workers” A Mid-Century Turning Point For Migrant Farmworkers, 15 Oct. 2018, https://www.wiscontext.org/mid-century-turning-point-migrant-farmworkers-wisconsin.Gordon, Scott. “A home for Mexican workers” A Mid-Century Turning Point For Migrant Farmworkers, 15 Oct. 2018, https://www.wiscontext.org/mid-century-turning-point-migrant-farmworkers-wisconsin.
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"The agriculture industry has been “unique” in its ability “to exclude farm workers from the social welfare gains made by most other workers over the past 30 years ...”agriculture [was] among the nation’s many industries is an anachronism and must be terminated ."
~ Thomas L Pitts, secretary of the California Labor Federation. |
"The conditions were terrible. The farmworkers were only earning about 70 cents an hour at that time - 90 cents was the highest wage that they were earning. They didn't have toilets in the fields; they didn't have cold drinking water. They didn't have rest periods. People worked from sunup to sundown. It was really atrocious."
~ Dolores Huerta, cofounder of the UFW. |
Gordon, Scott. “A family living in a van” A Mid-Century Turning Point For Migrant Farmworkers, 15 Oct. 2018, https://www.wiscontext.org/mid-century-turning-point-migrant-farmworkers-wisconsin.Gordon, Scott. “A home for Mexican workers” A Mid-Century Turning Point For Migrant Farmworkers, 15 Oct. 2018, https://www.wiscontext.org/mid-century-turning-point-migrant-farmworkers-wisconsin.
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